How the Field Gets Built
Start here before you look at the model: the committee's own criteria for picking and seeding the field, and what's shaping this season. NCAA Basketball
Start here
The Process
How the Field Gets Built
The 12 people on the selection committee, the seven metrics on every team sheet, quadrant records, the 1 to 76 seed list, and what the expanded field changes.
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76-Team Era
This Cycle
2026 Bracketology Watch
What is shaping the field this season. The first 76-team cycle, the conference map after realignment, and where the preseason numbers have teams.
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2026 Season
The Process
How the Women's Field Gets Built
The same 12-member committee structure and quadrant system, with its own thresholds and a published criteria list built around NET and Wins Above Bubble instead of the computer-ranking stack the men's committee uses.
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76-Team Era, 2027
This Cycle
2026 Bracketology Watch
The same offseason page, with its own section on where the women's field stands: the conference realignment both tournaments share, this season's early Top 25, and the gap in the data before NET arrives.
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2026 Season
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Reference
How Bracket Studio's Scoring Works
Why I grade seed accuracy instead of wins, how the Paymon Scoring System scores a finished bracket, and what a good score looks like.
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456 Possible
How-To
The Bracket Studio Guide
A full walkthrough of Bracket Studio, covering drag-and-drop placement, Auto-Seed, Compare, saved slots, sharing and keyboard shortcuts.
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Studio How-To
How-To
The Paymon Guide
How to score a finished bracket against the real field with the Bracket Performance Calculator, and how to read your summary.
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Studio How-To
Reference
A Glossary of Bracketology Terms
Plain definitions of NET, quad records, the seed list, WAB, automatic qualifiers, bubble tiers and everything else on a team sheet.
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Reference